


You're A Shadow Wrapped In A Mask Of Light, My Love

by Zayrastriel



Series: Vessels [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, hints of underage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-03-19
Packaged: 2017-11-28 01:34:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zayrastriel/pseuds/Zayrastriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy Novak dies before he can say yes to Castiel, leaving Dean to adjust to looking at an eleven year old girl and seeing the soldier of God he knew before - but not the soldier of God he wanted to love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happy fic. It'll have a happy-ish/optimistic ending, but it's not happy. There's underage, but not in the way that we see it because while the body is young, the soul is ancient. There are issues of ethics and morality, and ageism/sexism too.

Castiel can feel Claire battering against his Grace ( _her, now, no matter how used to the male pronoun she has become_ ).  He – she – is protecting the girl’s soul mindful of her vessel’s youth.  But as she looks down at her former vessel, feels the shuddering dying breaths of Jimmy Novak against her skin as his soul trembles on the cusp of dissipating to Heaven, Castiel can’t help but flinch.

And Castiel’s own discomfort can do nothing but enhance the girl’s fear.

“It’ll hurt,” Castiel says again, though she can feel the wavering, feel the gradually solidifying determination echo through Jimmy’s soul.  She doesn’t want to take any chances though, for while Claire’s body is as comfortable as Jimmy’s was, Castiel has become…accustomed to the man’s shape, to the low timbre of his voice.

As Dean must have-

 _Don’t think about that_ , Castiel tells herself firmly.  _All of that is over now_. 

Memories resurface too suddenly, little flickers of being laid bare and open, feeling her Grace in the hands of Michael-

Jimmy chokes and Castiel startles.  _No_.  _No, not now_ as she reaches out to touch the man, to wring consent from his body…

…But it’s too late.

 ** _No_.  ** That’s Claire, horrified and scared and Castiel pushes her down, down, forces her mind into dormancy because her vessel is dead.

“Cas?  Are you alright…?”

_Dean._

Castiel stands and turns to face the Winchesters.  “I’m fine,” she says, conscious of the discomfort that crosses Dean and Sam’s faces at the sound of Castiel’s new voice, high and clear.  It sounds strange to Castiel too, unfamiliar. 

Wrong.

 _Wrong –_ Castiel frowns at that, a ripple of…something and a flash of memories; memories of something that can’t have happened yet because – _Michael, tall and slender but somehow tiny next to Lucifer’s broad shoulder and burning regret as Jimmy Novak watches with a burning bottle in his hand (must be Jimmy Novak, must be because there’s no angel in that body, just a misfitting human soul-)_

 “Claire?  Claire, sweetie?  Claire?  _Claire_?” 

It’s the girl’s mother – _~~Mummy~~ Amelia_. In Claire’s memories, she’s never heard her mother’s voice this high, this shrill and panicked and bordering just on the wrong side of hysteria.  Jimmy has, though.  Jimmy has, and so Castiel knows before she turns around exactly what expression will be twisting Amelia’s face.

Not that she cares, now.  A human’s sentimental attachments mean nothing to her; should mean nothing, will mean nothing-

_Cas, you okay?-_

**_No._ **

She holds one hand out in front of her, stopping Amelia as the woman rushes forwards to embrace Castiel’s vessel.  “Claire accepted me into her body,” Castiel says quietly, and not completely without regret.  “Heaven has need of her, now.”

“No,” the woman says slowly, then with more urgency, “no.  No, you can’t, you _can’t_ , you…take _me_ , please!” She steps forwards again, reaches down towards Castiel’s shoulders as if to grasp them.

Castiel steps back.  “You are not of the bloodline,” she replies.  “I can only take one of Ishmael’s blood, Amelia.  Your husband, and now your daughter.”

Amelia Novak looks at Castiel, her eyes glazed and vacant.  “Claire,” she whispers.  “Claire, sweetie, what are you doing.  Claire, come here, Claire, your father is…”  Her gaze drops, moves across to the bloodstained corpse of Jimmy Novak, and then very clearly edits it out of her field of vision.

(And it’s always been impressive to Castiel, that humans are so easily able to mould their own truth.)

“Claire,” Amelia repeats, like her daughter’s name is some sort of chant keeping the door between her mind and reality firmly shut.  “Come here, sweetie, please…”

“Cas.  Cas, what’s…?” Sam wraps a hand around his brother’s forearm, silencing the older Winchester.  But Dean’s intention is clear, wrapped up in the empathy and regret glimmering in those eyes. 

And he is right.  Castiel steps towards Amelia, sees a glint of dull happiness warring with the hazy confusion that’s left her mouth very slightly slack.  Before the woman can touch Castiel, she reaches up and presses two fingers against Claire’s mother’s forehead. 

Takes not just her consciousness, but every single memory of Claire.  Enough for her to mourn a dead husband, but Castiel is not cruel.

( _Yes you are!_ Claire screams at her but Claire’s asleep, so it can’t be Claire but-)

Dean catches the woman before she falls to the floor, lowering her gently before tilting his head up to glare at Castiel, eyes burning bright with fury.  “What was that for, huh?” Dean demands.  Castiel raises an eyebrow, tries to convey _isn’t it obvious_? with the muscles of her face.  But she’s spent too much time in Heaven, where disdain is a flick of the right tailfeather, and this isn’t the body she’s used to, so she can’t help but think that the expression may have fallen a little flat.

“The woman was hysterical,” she replies coldly.  For some reason, Dean flinches, earning him a glance from Sam that’s oddly…sympathetic?

But it’s gone as soon as Sam, abomination (kind, though, and loving) looks towards Castiel.  “Cas, you’ve got to let the girl go,” he tells Castiel, voice somewhat more polite than Dean’s had been.

And Heaven is right; how long has Castiel been enduring the rudeness of these two humans?  Sam, perhaps, cannot stop himself, infected as he is with Lucifer’s taint – but Dean, Michael’s sword; he should be better than this, should shine brighter and with more purity than a broken-down snarling wreck from Hell.

“I do not answer to you, _boy_ ,” Castiel hisses, though her facial muscles remain still, unresponsive to her emotion in the same way Jimmy’s used to be, the first week Castiel spent in that body.  “The girl said yes.  I have every right to be here.”

The younger Winchester flinches away, but Dean throws back his shoulders, meets Castiel’s gaze.  “Come on, man,” he says, and even Castiel is able to discern the forcedness underpinning his casual tone, the tension running through her body.  “Do you really want to be stuck in a chick’s body?  I mean – dude, isn’t she a bit young for you?”

Words are on the tip of her tongue – _I am utterly indifferent to gender, I feel no sexual attraction to any being, aged or not_ – but she bites them back because _you are not like them, you are greater than them, they are hairless apes and you are the light of God_.

She shakes her head.  “I don’t answer to you,” she repeats.  “Heaven has called Claire Novak to service, and she will serve.  As will you two.”

“But-“ And of _course_ Dean pushes it, stubborn primate that he is.  If this were Jimmy Novak’s body Castiel would have reached out, shoved the human against the wall and shown him his place.  But Claire is small and slim, so instead Castiel splays out a hand, lets her power do the work for her as Dean struggles at the invisible hand pinning him against the dirty brick.

“ _Enough, Dean_.”  From the way Sam claps his hands over his ears and winces, a bit of Castiel’s true voice must have bled through.

_Control. **Control.**_

Dean’s staring at Castiel, no longer struggling against Castiel’s power.  “Please, Cas,” he whispers, cockiness suddenly dissipated.  “She’s just a kid.”

Angelic vessels do not tire, nor do the angels within them.  But a sudden weariness racks Castiel’s Grace, hits her with waves of draining fatigue till all she wants is to return to the Garden, to the peaceful, emotionless tranquillity of Heaven.  “I shall endeavour to find another vessel to hold me,” Castiel finally murmurs, child’s voice barely a wisp of noise in the suddenly quiet room.  “But Claire will hold me till then.”

An echo, _please no, please, it hurts_ , but Castiel silences it with a flicker of thought as she brushes past Sam.

“Where are you going?”

Sam asks quietly.  Castiel doesn’t bother to turn as she responds.  “To do Heaven’s work.  Not yours.”


	2. Chapter 2

It’s all a flicker of hazy images and memories – like blurred photographs and badly-recorded videos of teenage birthdays – till Dean wakes Castiel up with two hands on her shoulder, trying to shake her till he realises she’s an angel, not a child, and turns away in disgust.

 _And no, that isn’t true_.  Castiel is an angel of the Lord, a creature of the light.  She remembers everything with unrelenting clarity, till something unfamiliar and frightening in her aches with a pain Claire tentatively associates with nausea.

There’s Zachariah gloating as Sam goes crazy, intoxicated by the blood that the demon forces him to crave.

There’s Castiel and the smile, as warm as she can make it but touched by sadness all the same, as she opens the door and lets Sam out.

And then there’s Dean’s rage, palpable and burning (though slightly tempered with confusion whenever he looks in her direction.)

It’s ( _not_ ) a flicker of hazy images and clear-cut memory till Castiel catches the suddenly sharpening intent in Dean’s mind to _strike out_ at Castiel’s ( _Claire’s – no, she’s just a child, fricking meatsuit or not goddamnit_ ) face.

That, more than the feeling of warm human skin against her bare shoulders, draws Castiel back into the realisation that this is happening.

That Dean has his hands on Castiel’s shoulders, is stooped over to meet her eyes with a desperately burning rage – and something else, a sort of despairing curiosity, as though he’s looking for something.

_Please tell me you’re in there, Cas, c’mon dude, please-_

Castiel vanishes in a panicked flutter of wings.  But Dean’s words linger on, teasing at her, and maybe they’re the reason that she ends up on a vast, wide beach on the north-east coast of Australia.  It’s twilight here, and heading into autumn, so the beach is largely deserted, and too dim for any of the humans on the beach to detect her.  Nevertheless, she draws the coat she’s wearing tighter around her –

-And realises for the first time that this is Jimmy Novak’s trenchcoat that she’s wearing, too large and trailing to the ground but somehow still clean.

 _Jimmy Novak_.

(And her mind’s whirling to places it can’t, where they told her it can’t, to Dean and the witches, and Sam Winchester striving so hard to _do the right thing_ , to Claire’s _TAKE ME_ – Dean, Claire, Sam, Dean, Uriel, Anna-)

 ** _It wasn’t meant to be like this_ **_, Jimmy howls in soundless agony as Castiel’s Grace brushes up against his soul and fills his body. **It wasn’t meant to be like this**_.

Doubtless someone sees her vanish.

But she doesn’t care, and that is at least a somewhat liberating sensation.

* * *

 

The elder Winchester doesn’t struggle at all when Castiel pushes him into the wall with two small hands raised to the centre of his chest.  Instead, he merely looks startled.

Startled, but not scared – even when she pulls out the knife – and something about that bothers her but there’s no time for that, not now that she’s decided.

“Be very, _very_ quiet,” Castiel hisses anyway, in a high shrill whisper that she wills to sound intimidating.  Dean flinches enough that she’s satisfied.  But there’s still no fear in his expression, and it stirs the disquiet within her again…

 _Not now_ , she tells the thoughts; and if Dean is the epitome of repression then angels are the personifications of compartmentalisation; for the murmured words dissipate with barely a protest into the back of her mind as she draws out the knife, presses it to the soft skin of Claire’s hand (inside her, Claire winces at the same time as Dean utters a soft sound of confusion.)

Castiel ignores the both of them.

She’s made a decision, and for the first time since Michael entered her cell in Heaven and whispered those _words_ into her very being, she feels good.

* * *

 

Chuck is more than surprised when Castiel and Dean appear in his house – he’s incredulous, staring down at Castiel as though she’s a phantom of his dreams.  “You’re not meant to  _be_ here!” he chokes out. 

She shrugs.  “Well, we are, prophet.”  As he splutters behind her, Castiel turns towards Dean.  “You’ve got to go and stop Sam,” she says urgently.  “You’re the only one who can, Dean.”

Dean’s looking straight over her head for a moment – in a way that makes her miss Jimmy’s body, if only for the height it afforded her – before he tilts his gaze towards her.  “What about you?” he asks, voice quiet and strangely fearful.  The concern is touching, even if the fact that he, a  _human_ , is worrying about  _Castiel_ -

“I’ll hold them off,” Castiel tells him, and it’s a promise. An oath, that trembles strangely in her Grace.  “I’ll hold them all off.”

Before Dean can say anymore, Castiel leans up and grasps his shoulders to pull him down towards her.  Two fingers pressed to his head, and Dean’s gone.

“You’re not doing what you’re supposed to do,” Chuck says from behind Castiel.

She glances over her shoulder at him.  Bizarrely, he doesn’t seem distraught anymore; merely very slightly thoughtful.  “Perhaps,” she agrees.  “Does that bother you?”

“Sort of.”  The prophet shrugs.  “Or maybe not.  Feels sort of good to not know everything for a ch…oh,  _fuck_.”

* * *

 

**_Castiel._ **

Much to her surprise, Raphael doesn’t immediately smite Castiel into nonexistence.  Zhie is planning to, of course – she can read the intent in zhir Grace.

But for some reason, the archangel merely regards Castiel, a hint of amusement.

**_You defy Heaven?_ **

For Chuck’s benefit, she tells herself, Castiel speaks her response aloud.  (And if the sound waves are comforting, even grounding – well, that can only be further incentive.)  “Yes.”  Is it merely her imagination, or a symptom of the effect of an archangel’s Grace on room acoustics; or does that word sound slightly higher than it normally would in Claire’s mezzo soprano voice?

Nevertheless, she has made her choice.  “Heaven’s plan is wrong, revered brother,” she continues.  “Not-“

**_Interesting.  Of all the angels who might have Fallen, I would hardly have expected you to be one of them._ **

She crumples in on herself and squeezes her eyes shut against the pain – the pain of rejection, because _she is not Fallen_.  “Uh, Castiel…are you okay-“

 ** _Silence, revered Prophet_**.

There isn’t a large amount of reverence in the hum of Raphael’s silent-shouted Enochian; not that Chuck, wide-eyed and uncomprehending, understands what zhie is saying anyway.  “Don’t worry, Chuck,” Castiel says softly, unfolding with an effort though Raphael’s words still bite into her.

“I am not Fallen,” she adds, as firmly as she can.  “I am fulfilling what I believe to be God’s plan, Raphael.  I will aid Dean and Sam Winchester, however I can.”

**_I would think your vessel is a little young for that, sister._ **

It takes Castiel a good half a second to process the sardonic amusement in the archangel’s words; to recognise the double-connotation of the word Raphael chooses to use to call her ‘sister’ – the same word some of the angels use with what Castiel has always found to be unnecessary cruelty, when they talk of Lilith.

Lilith, raped and stoned to death when she was fourteen years old, and perhaps it's no lapse on her part that she worships Lucifer so.

_Lilith._

_Child-whore._

It is at this point that Castiel _strikes_ , the whirl of Claire’s revulsion working in tandem with her own to burn her Grace a little brighter, a little harder – enough that she detects a hint of surprise

* * *

 

And then nothingness.

* * *

_Till-_

* * *

  
The world explodes in a kaleidoscope of light –

* * *

 

 

(And a single thought, astonished and hopeful)

* * *

 

 

  
_I’m alive_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes so from now on it gets exciting. Also vaguely angsty. More vaguely angsty. Or something.


End file.
